Comedian's podcast recreates lost 'mass telepathy' experiment

In a troubled week for the BBC, they might wish they could read the minds of their audience.

A hundred years ago this week, the BBC – then just three years into its existence – actually attempted it. 

A new podcast comedy-drama recreates this bizarre unrecorded broadcast, thanks to century-old newspaper articles detailing exactly what happened.

On 12 November 1925, the BBC asked its listeners to transmit their thoughts through their radio sets, in An Evening Of Mass Telepathy, which was billed as ’an experiment in thought reading in which every listener will be invited to assist’. There was some confusion over whether this was a scientific experiment or a parlour game. Many listeners took it seriously, but the celebrity panel thought otherwise.

The British Broadcasting Century podcast has recreated the event as a dramatisation using a cast of voiceover artists, above, to be released on its centenary this Wednesday. Podcast host and comedy writer Paul Kerensa has penned a script recreating the experiment.

‘It was the Celebrity Traitors of its day: stars around a table in a fancy hotel playing a gothic game, perhaps sharing a fizzy rosé,’ says Kerensa. The panel included several stage actresses, an MP, a theatre critic, the BBC’s education director and the first radio dramatist Phyllis Twigg, voiced in this dramatisation by her great-granddaughter Carina Saner. Twigg was the only panellist to take the event seriously. 

Spiritualist and Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had intended to join, but refused at the last moment when he realised the other celebrities would be playing it for laughs.  

‘The press were thorough in their descriptions,’ says Kerensa, above, who has advised BBC documentaries on the broadcaster’s history. ’Newsreader and host Sir Alfred Robbins (the Clive Myrie of his day) was alone in the BBC’s Savoy Hill studio, while down the road at the Savoy Hotel, eight celebrities opened their minds - and a few bottles, by the sounds of it.’

The host announced to listeners - but not to the panel - six items including a playing card (three of diamonds), a number (seven) and an uncategorised item (the game of bridge). Some of the audience, estimated at ten million, then ‘shouted’ their thoughts to their radio sets, in the hope that the celebrities would pick up their signals.

The guesses included Charlie Chaplin, the lamp burning on the Cenotaph, and a chicken - but only panto star Zena Dare guessed anything correctly: that the shape Sir Alfred was thinking of was a triangle.

The psychic experiment was reported as a resounding failure, and listeners were annoyed by the panel treating it as an after-dinner game. Even a day of the week wasn’t correctly guessed - a one in seven chance.

Published: 10 Nov 2025